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Emissary, Part 1 & 2: (from Netflix) When the troubled Cmdr. Sisko takes command of a surrendered space station, he learns that it borders a unique stable wormhole.
I love Star Trek, and I would be the first to admit that the pilot episodes are very rarely my favourite to watch — but of those pilot episodes, I tend to find Emissary to be the most enjoyable and the one I have the most affection for. I’m most definitely biased, but there’s just something about Emissary as a set-up that draws me in instead of boring me.
It sucks that the show starts off fridging the MC’s wife, but I do like how it goes from the action on Sisko’s old vessel and his focus on saving his crew and his son, especially as we see the real impact and trauma from the Borg. It’s an echo of what makes DS9 my favourite Trek — it always explores long-term and subtle impacts, and the real ramifications of cause and effect, instead of letting everything be swallowed into nothingness by the end of the episode.
Deep Space Nine obviously starts as a jumping off point from Picard’s time with the Borg, with Sisko facing fire from the Borg as led by the assimilated Picard, before jumping forward in time to Sisko taking command of the now-surrendered ex-Cardassian space station, Terok Nor — now Deep Space Nine — in orbit over the planet Bajor, three years later.
It’s so important to me that DS9 starts off by establishing the extent to which Ben Sisko is devoted to Jake — Jake ends up being one of my favourite characters in his own right, but I love how focused Sisko is on his son from the get-go. I think for a lot of shows, widowed fathers often end up parenting their kids as if they’re doing it for their dead wives, and often their whole relationship is framed from that perspective — it’s not that that grief should be treated as immaterial, but it sometimes comes off as an extension of the belief that fathers are just “babysitting” their own kids, and aren’t caregivers in their own right.
Never ever do I feel that way watching DS9, not with Sisko or any of the parents. Sisko loves Jake because he’s his father and Jake’s his son, but also we see how much of his time, his focus and energy, that he devotes to Jake — and we see his flaws as a father, too, the drawbacks of his singular focus and vision, where his dreams and ambitions for Jake don’t match with Jake’s own, where he makes mistakes.
I recently rewatched a few of the TNG episodes where the Bajoran-Cardassian conflict is addressed, including the Occupation and some of the war crimes and such, as well as the VOY episode with Crell Moset, a Cardassian doctor who experimented on Bajorans, but like… The way that DS9 sets up the intentional brutality of the Cardassians when surrendering the space station is so good — the way the whole of the station is smashed to pieces, lights flashing and wires on display, reminiscent of the damage done to Sisko’s ship in the prologue; the mention of the four Bajoran shopkeepers killed just for trying to protect their storefronts; the lack of any equipment or infrastructure left in place, just in case there is some way to misinterpret it as good will.
The Cardassians might no longer occupy Bajor, and they might have abandoned Terok Nor to the Federation of Planets, but by no means does this mean they are truly allies — or even that they’re truly no longer hostile.
TNG always talks about the fragility of peace between the Federation and the Klingons or the Romulans or the Cardassians, but with Deep Space Nine being in one place so close to the border, always affected by border tensions and treaties without being able to fly off to some different quadrant, you always feel it.
I also like how details about the Cardassians and their culture and physiology are drizzled in bit by bit — because the Cardassians are going to be present throughout the series, they’re able to be more subtle and layer in bits piece by piece with casual worldbuilding in the dialogue, and I love that.
O’BRIEN: That’s the Prefect’s office up there.
SISKO: So all others have to look up with respect… Cardassian architecture.
O’BRIEN: Yes, sir. Major Kira’s been using it.
SISKO: Is it my imagination, or is it unusually warm?
O’BRIEN: The environmental controls in Ops are stuck at 32C. We’re working on it.
Cardassians have a strictly ordered chain of command and authority, reflected in their architecture, and Cardassians like it hot!
And I just… I adore Kira. I love how when Sisko first comes in on her it’s to her yelling, and that she will yell throughout; I love that he greets her while pretending not to notice she’s angry and smiling beatifically; I love that he tells her to tell the truth, and listens to her when she explains why she’s at odds with the provisional government of Bajor and the Federation.
Sisko keeps smiling when Kira is grumpy and angry with him, and I love it so much — he lives for the chaos! He lives for hearing the Federation get rightfully criticised! He lives for making the absolute best out of the worst situation!
What I really love about Sisko is the extent to which he’s a true ambassador — he doesn’t give a shit about politics or mending the hurt feelings between states particularly, but he’s truly incredible at ensuring that individual people are balanced and can live with as little conflict between each other as possible. He manipulates and he makes subtle arrangements, he threatens, he trains, he mentors — he puts in the work, and he puts in the care, and he doesn’t do it from the position of someone who wants to be other people’s saviour, because he isn’t, no matter that he’s the Emissary.
He’s the opposite of Picard — he doesn’t see the Federation as inherently a force for good, and doesn’t even see himself as such, and I… love that. I love Sisko desperately.
He keeps Quark on the station! Quark!
He gets it.
The way that Odo decides that he likes Sisko purely because Sisko gets one over on Quark? My man.
The way DS9 sets up a lot of initial character traits is so good — the way that Odo is at odds with Quark and much of the station, the way that Quark feels unstable with the government, the way that Kira cares most about hard work and doing it with her own hands if it needs to be done, and the fact that Sisko will join in…
I also really like how Emissary sets up the introduction of the Bajoran religion in the first instance, and how Bajoran faith is a key theme throughout the whole of the show — I regularly make criticism of Star Trek’s anti-religion standpoint when it comes to humans, just because anti-theist focuses are white supremacist by nature, but DS9 genuinely does religion right.
It’s allowed to be beautiful and horrifying, complex and wide-ranging from person to person, community to community, allowed to be hard, allowed to be deep, allowed to bring ease and peace — it’s not just a one-episode evil, or a metaphor for church control. Even the elements of the Vulcan philosophy aren’t usually explored in the way that the Bajoran faith is on DS9, and I just… Ah, I love it.
I really like the way that the Prophets are shown in the series, the way that they can’t truly comprehend what it is to be linear and to experience time, what it is to experience space and corporeality as other species do, and the way that that’s gotten across to the viewer so smoothly in their use of memories — and at the same time, how we can experience Sisko’s desperation, his grief for Jennifer, his utter joy at seeing her again, even in the context of one of his own memories.
I love that we see Sisko as a charmer in his memory with Jennifer too — there’s so much depth to Sisko’s character, and so many layers to the ways he interacts with other characters, how he presents himself, what information he shares and what emotion he shows, and it’s what makes him unique among the captains for me in terms of how much he just… truly understands people, but also never truly judges them, even when he wants to.
Sisko on DS9 — as well as Jadzia Dax and Quark — truly embraces other cultures, other ways of seeing the world, other moralities, and doesn’t always assume he’s right where they’re wrong, and even questions himself when he’s sure he is; more than that, he doesn’t always care whether he’s right or not, and there’s something so terrifically refreshing about that.
I love Julian Bashir’s introduction, he’s such… an idiot. Bless that twink’s heart.
I do find it funny that Sisko’s like, “Hm, I wonder if he’d be as interested if you looked the way you did the last time I saw you,” about Dax being Jadzia now instead of Curzon, and her saying “Maybe not,” and then a few episodes later we see Julian absolutely losing his mind because a flamboyant, morally grey middle-aged male alien is putting his hands on him. Curzon Dax would have been exactly his type!
I will confess to being biased because Julian Bashir is one of my favourite characters in the show, but I’m always so fascinated in the image we see of him in S1, and how much of his naiveté is… real.
Because I absolutely believe, much of the time, that he truly is overwhelmed and overstimulated, that he’s socially awkward — we know later on that Julian has been with quite a few women and is genuinely good at flirting, but there’s something about Dax and Garak respectively that just makes him so nervous and leaves him stumbling and nervous, and I do have to wonder if it’s the age gap, because even earlier on in the season, we see other times where he’s unbelievably suave.
Sure, he’s just out of school and excited to get to work, still has growing up to do, but I do wonder how much he went to the effort of emphasisisng what work he had left to do in that respect, particularly given how anxious he is about being potentially discovered as an augment, how he specifically avoided getting the top space at university, and moreover, like —
He’s finally not on Earth any longer? Finally completely separate from his parents, from everyone who knew him there? He’s able, if he wants to, to recreate himself, not just from the ashes of Jules, but to decide what sort of person he wants to be at his own speed, on his own recognizance?
I just… I have a lot of feelings about Bashir’s identity, especially because we know that James Bond is one of his heroes, and that he’s English, that he really embraces a lot of colonial and frontier fantasy, and that colours a lot of what he says and does, a lot of how he thinks of Bajor, in the first instance, and his place in Starfleet as a whole. It tempers and changes with time, but his fetish for spies and “adventure” is always there, and it kills me, because Julian does want to be a hero, he does want to be a saviour, an explorer, a hero.
BASHIR: Right here, in the wilderness.
KIRA: This “wilderness” is my home.
The way that Julian represents everything that Kira expects of the Federation, everything that she fears they’ll bring with them, because it’s not about how well-meaning it is — it’s about the attitude! It’s about how the Bajorans, when seen as quaint natives or a people to be saved, are utterly dehumanised and stripped of agency or choice, and how the Federation are painted as perfect heroes in the process.
I do love how the Tear of the Prophets is used to set up Sisko’s initial meeting with Jennifer, but also Jadzia’s being joined with Dax from Curzon. It’s such a neat little insight into her history and her identity.
And I die over how Miles O’Brien doesn’t want to disturb Picard when he’s taking his leave from the Enterprise after serving on her for so long, and serving under Picard for so long. I have a huge amount of affection for O’Brien despite — and because of — his many flaws, but I particularly die over the way that we see Picard react, the fact that he chases O’Brien down to bid him farewell, but more than that, we see his expression after he beams O’Brien away.
Picard takes it as a personal failure that O’Brien, who’s served under him for so many years as such an important part of their team, doesn’t feel like he’s able to disturb him by saying goodbye, that he feels such a distance between them. Yes, it comes from a place of respect, and a difference in rank — we know from TNG that O’Brien is greatly concerned with closely observing rank and file as a soldier and as a Starfleet officer — but all those years, all those battles served together, and they’re not friends? Not comrades, even?
It’s fitting, that O’Brien moves hesitantly around Ops on the Enterprise, and politely declines the invitation that another officer alerts Picard in his Ready Room, when at the beginning of the episode we see Sisko scornfully comment on how the Prefect’s office is positioned to ensure that those in Ops are looking up toward and respecting the Prefect.
To command that sort of respect, you need distance — and more than that, you need at least a little bit of fear, of intimidation. Picard ends his legacy on TNG with more than a few regrets, but I do think that one of the things that separates Picard and Sisko is the way that they command — it’s not that Sisko cares more about other people than Picard, or that Picard intentionally sees himself as superior to others, but a fundamental difference in how they move through and react to the world around them.
Sisko, even as Emissary, even as Captain and Commander, considers himself one amongst equals; Picard, even when he’s one man in a crowd, considers himself a Starfleet Captain.
But of course they’re different — how couldn’t they be?
Picard captains an exploratory vessel moving through remote space on a mission of territory expansion, searching for resources, potential planets to colonise, new worlds to trade with and benefit the Federation; Sisko captains a chaotic space station on the edge of multiple territories, and brokers — as best he can — peace between the different cultures aboard, trying to help the Bajorans without ceding too much of their autonomy to his own organisation in the process.
Not to say that Sisko isn’t complicit in the Federation’s expansion or their manipulations of Bajor or any other planet under threat! Just that he does take time to self-analyse and sabotage his orders pretty often, and not only because he thinks there’s a specific injustice at hand like a corrupt ambassador — often, he works against the Federation to favour Bajor or someone else in more subtle ways, and he thinks nothing of doing so.
And ah, the introduction of my man.
Dukat!
I love it when Dukat delivers subtle threats and lies under the cover of “being honest” — Dukat is obviously someone who’s read up very considerably on manipulation strategy, and he cares very much about being seen as impressive and commanding, but he’s ultimately so lacking in discipline and self-control that he often ends up snapping and showing his hand nonetheless. In Emissary, with Sisko still figuring out his place on the station and Dukat feeling he’s about to come back into power, their roles are reversed in that regard, Sisko’s smiles and confidence often being rapidly replaced with sudden cold moods — with Picard, with Dukat — and I really love watching this episode knowing how that’s going to change as time goes on.
I love how much the camera lingers on Odo’s transformations in the earliest episodes, just to show you the whole process — they always show Odo change forms in ways I really enjoy throughout the series, but in the first season there’s a lot of sequences where the camera stays static and lets you see the whole change in his size and shape rather than panning or cutting away mid-transformation, and I love that. It’s not just a budgetary thing later on — once you know how it works and have that visual language internalised, you don’t need to see the whole process slowed down or in its entirety — but I love how much it’s set up in the beginning.
I love how it’s a running joke in the series that the best way to get Cardassian things to work when malfunctioning is to kick them, be rude to them, or otherwise blow them up — I think it is one of those things that tells us a lot about Cardassian culture and structure despite being so incredibly minor, just in that like…
So, the Cardassians are fascists. They believe in an incredibly rigid chain of command and a firm supremacist power structure; they’re eugenicists, Cardassian supremacists, and they see no problem at all with prejudice unless they want to claim they’re facing some; the Cardassians are passionate bureaucrats and militant administrators, but all that paperwork does not actually translate to efficiency, and in actual fact, often creates the opposite.
There are a few reasons for this.
In the first instance, for all Cardassians believe in eugenics and Cardassian supremacy, their desire to put their best Cardassians in one command or another is overwhelmed by their focus on nepotism, whether through family connections or via the currying of personal favour. Cardassians are also hugely disposed to centering their cosmetic and surface-level concerns over those which actually have more bearing — Dukat is a competent commander, for example, but is frequently distracted by women, particularly Bajoran women, is a victim of his own ego which makes him easily targeted, and he’s prone to sudden fits of pique which lead him to make rash decisions, both from a personal and a command perspective. Dukat often makes decisions that have dramatic and difficult-to-overcome consequences for Cardassian High Command, and for those around him, but he stays in his place — because he’s handsome, because he’s charismatic, because he curries personal favour.
Even when he descends in status later on, he manages to claw his way up by putting on a few choice performances, all to lose his place again.
Cardassians, like all fascists, are blinded by their own prejudices, convincing themselves that what they’re truly prioritising is logic and strength — how can a Cardassian truly be strong, after all, when he takes any criticism of his errors as a personal attack, and destroys the ones who criticised him if he can? How can the strongest ascend to command, if the richest and the most well-connected take the top places first? How can a Cardassian go to the work he’s truly most suited to, if instead he’s permitted to select whatever’s best for his ego or that of his family’s, or that of his old commander’s?
How can Cardassians leave a long-lasting legacy and create a solid empire, when they drain every colonised planet of every resource, and ensure that the denizens of that planet abhor and despise them forever? When Cardassians in command glut themselves on luxury to escape the military asceticism they claim makes them so strong — when every Cardassian commander will focus on abusing local women, eating local food, drinking, gambling, playing games — all while the people he rules over are starving, freezing cold, without medication, without shelter? These latter not just being the people he’s colonised, but the lowest castes of his own command — and indeed, the lowest castes on Cardassia Prime itself?
And then comes the bureaucracy and the design choices made by Cardassians in their architecture and their technology. Cardassian design frequently prioritises form over comfort — sharp angles, dramatic lines, harsh metals and surfaces. It’s more important that your design intimidates than it comforts. Cardassians don’t need, after all, bright lights: they excel best in dimmer environs, and are comfortable in high heats, in hard armour, on hard surfaces. They don’t have the soft and vulnerable flesh a lot of other species do, they don’t sweat, they can go without luxury.
Do they want to? No. Do they enjoy going without? No. Their asceticism is a choice and a performance, much of the time.
But it’s telling, isn’t it, that the Prefect’s office on Terok Nor had so little damage done to it, and is so wide and open, so neatly designed, functions so well, when even Ops has a lot more malfunctions, let alone when you go down into the engineering wells or the docking ports or anywhere else that’s not on open display? That Cardassian prisons are so much more carefully designed and bolstered than their kitchens or their infirmaries?
That Cardassians keep such careful paperwork and administration, keep such perfect records of money spent, lives lost, work done, record increments and percentages and numbers, and yet they’re always overbudget? Always behind schedule? Always undermanned, and always underpaid, the people always starving even when the Empire is at its prime, many of the ships malfunctioning and coming apart even when they’re at their strongest?
Cardassian culture and command is always a house of cards built on appearances — it’s why the Obsidian Order functions so well, and why they struggle so much to meaningfully adapt to anything without forcing Cardassian expectations on it.
And it’s ultimately why they were always and are always doomed to lose against the Bajorans: Cardassians all claim to believe in something that none of them actually believe in, every single one of them engaging in the doublethink of a glorious empire that’s somehow always on the brink of collapse; Bajorans believe not just in their own pagh or the higher power of the Prophets, but in themselves, in progress, in strength.
Cardassians fix things with whatever tiny piece of budget or scrap they have left, and hope it will be enough to tide them over before they finally get what they keep being promised from their commanders, and so Cardassian infrastructure is always based on a dozen owed debts and a hundred stopgaps; the Bajoran Maquis assume that what they have is all they’ll get, and they make do. They innovate, they get creative, and for all they might resist Cardassian brutality when they can, they can do just as much damage without it.
Ultimately I love the Cardassians to pieces because of the inherent contradictions of being a Cardassian and how much Cardassians are controlled and conditioned, both by their cultural upbringing and by literal torture and conditioning practices — I also have my own criticisms of the Federation’s own expansionist policies and as I go on going through episodes I’m probably going to talk more and more about how the Federation’s expectations of assimilation match against or conflict with those of the other big forces, whether it’s the Romulan and Klingon Empires, the Cardassian Empire, or, of course, the Dominion and the Founders, because I actually think the Cardassians are easy at times because their flaws are so easy to see but not easy to fix when it comes to talking to an individual Cardassian, whereas the flaws in the Federation, for example, are far subtler and far more difficult to be aware of even from the inside, and they have a doublethink of their own that’s almost more insidious at times (*cough* Root beer, anyone? *cough*), but regardless of what angle you’re looking at, there’s just…
Guh. So much depth.
Anyway, while I was going off on a big tangent about the Cardassians, Sisko and Dax were discovering the wormhole, and have just found the Temple of the Prophets within.
I love when the Prophets in the Temple do their thing and use voices and faces in memories to speak through. I mentioned earlier in this write-up how much I enjoy how the Prophets are established as non-linear and non-corporeal, outside of time and consciousness as any of the other beings in DS9 know it. It’s so perfectly dream-like and ephemeral and strange, and it’s so difficult, I think, to comprehend this kind of completely foreign and non-Euclidean form of being and consciousness and existence, and then to translate that to an audio-visual medium like television.
I’ve watched so many different sci-fi and fantasy pieces that try to put this sort of thing across, actual Lovecraftian things included, and I don’t think any of them ever manage to communicate it with such a clean and comprehensive sense of reality and place and emotion as DS9 does.
The lighting in each of the memories and flashbacks, the way that each actor within the memory flattens their tone and affect despite appearing within the other person’s memories and using the faces they remember and recall, the constant soft flashes and sudden cuts, the splicing and merging of each memory together, with speakers from different and conflicting memories — not to mention how people mention experiencing the pain and sensation and physicality of the memory as well as the communication itself? And more than that, the sense of the Prophets as a collective and a hivemind, simultaneously a whole and also a collection of individuals, and in such a way where it’s impossible for outsiders to truly comprehend the difference — or even meaningfully make out if there is one? The sense of distress and uncertainty and anger and overstimulation when they try to follow the disagreements between the Prophets and the Prophets’ own thought process and logic, all the while trapped with them, inside them, somewhere but also not really trapped in a where at all?
Just… artfully done, every time, and with no need for huge flashy effects or really complicated or overwhelming CGI or editing. It’s subtler than that, and all the more evocative for its commitment to that subtlety.
Especially because the wormhole and the Temple of the Prophets becomes such a crucial claim to legitimacy for Bajor, I love how it’s simultaneously set up as a real and historical and spiritual focus for the Bajorans, something that’s been known throughout history and has previously been recorded, something that allows the Bajorans something to bargain with and use as influence with other powers — no matter that they do this via Federation processes and couldn’t do so without Federation assistance — is just such a great set-up for the whole of the series, you know?
Like… Yes, there’s the aftermath of the Cardassian Occupation, and the Federation’s own conflicts with them and other Empires and collectives, but the wormhole and its link to the Gamma Quadrant being something explicitly and intrinsically tied to Bajoran faith and history, and therefore to Bajor’s own power and command as a state attempting to re-establish itself, creates such an incredible and complex set of power dynamics and political ramifications. And again, as I’ve said before — the whole series, for the most part, is from the same standpoint, a place affected by the same concerns throughout, a static place, a physicality, a reality.
You can’t fly away to a different galaxy in your starship, you can’t go away and do something on a different planet, and leave the dirty work to the crew that comes after, or come and do the work of the crew that came before.
You don’t get to be the cause and only see a fraction of the effect.
It all affects you — the viewer, the crew, the planet of Bajor, the station of DS9, the Federation, the Cardassian Empire. And you don’t get to look away like you can in other series, when you’re thinking about Earth or Vulcan — you have to look at the uncomfortable bits. You have to keep hearing the uncomfortable bits. You have to know what you did wrong, when you do wrong, and you don’t get to forget about it next episode, or next series.
The wounds that scar stay scarred, and those scars can and will reopen. That’s the nature of Deep Space Nine instead of an Enterprise or a Voyager. That’s the nature of a static command instead of an exploratory vessel.
I love how the episode goes on to establish the relationship between O’Brien and the Cardassian computer, too — later on, that changes and evolves in ways I really love, but I think lot about how to Cardassians, arguments and disagreements are often signs of respect, affection, even flirtation, because they let you show your power or superiority over the other person, let you try your hand, and how even the Cardassian computer seems calibrated for that expectation of communication and that standard of conduct, rather than for obedience? How a lot of the controls built in are for the sake of maintaining a chain of command or certain bureaucratic rules and conditions, but to the Federation, who don’t see that as a factor in most of their interactions, let alone with a computer that’s meant to be a tool that obeys and is used, not that communicates back? I love that.
Communication is important throughout DS9, but the way it’s established in Emissary — O’Brien against the Cardassian computer; Bajor and Cardassia against the Federation; Sisko and Bashir against Kira; Dukat against Sisko; Odo against Quark… Cultural differences, different standards of communication, different prioritised values — command, respect, manners, profit, law and order, peace…
I love how the Prophets and Sisko communicate through memories, and the different ways that Sisko tries to communicate the concept of memory, of sensation, of time; I love how the Prophets say that they seek to communicate with other lifeforms, and not with “corporeal beings” that seek to annihilate them, because to them to be corporeal means that you can’t be a lifeform like they are, in much the same way that the corporeal species of the Federation believe the reverse; I love how Sisko and the Prophets try to comprehend one another.
Sisko and the Prophets argue — the Prophets say that the corporeal have no comprehension of the effects of their behaviour, and Sisko says that no, they do, they try to understand consequences, but they can only comprehend them based on their past experiences. The Prophets say that corporeal beings are inherently destructive — Sisko says they don’t mean to be. They’re just different; they’re just trying to understand; they’re just trying to reach out and touch someone else, to exist, to communicate, to share feeling, space.
Consequences.
It sets up the entire series! It sets up literally everything about DS9 as a series, as a set of stories, it sets up every single character — communication, consequences, ramifications, the unknown, the unpredictable, desire for connection!
SISKO: It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives, day by day, and we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge, and that is why I am here — not to conquer you with weapons, or with ideas, but to coexist, and learn.
And this is it, right?
This is the big money shot. Because this is what Sisko says — in response to a lifeform that says his very existence is disruptive, hostile, dangerous to them, he says, but that’s not our intention. We seek to coexist with you, and we can learn not to be hostile, not to disturb you, if you will only tell us how.
We don’t seek to conquer you — we seek only to connect with you.
Except.
Except, except, except — and this is the big thing of DS9’s ramifications, too.
How do you connect with someone whose existence rivals your own? Whose needs are in conflict with your own? Whose culture, whose personhood, whose very being, stands in defiance not just of your own values, but potentially of your very existence?
In the Federation of Planets, and all those peoples, those species, those states, in alliance — whose needs come first? Why them? What makes them the most important? If we all come together for the greater good, whose good is greatest?
They set a compromise on Deep Space Nine, a standard temperature for the Federation — not 32C, which is uncomfortably hot, but something a good deal lower; they set up the right lights; they put everything in place. This is all standard for the Federation, it’s the mean average for everybody — and no, the gravity, the oxygen content, the temperature, the humidity, these environmental standards do not accommodate everybody, but they accommodate the greatest whole.
There are individual episodes where different people’s needs for accessibility and accommodations conflict — where a representative of a species from a very different gravity struggles on DS9, where people struggle with the noise level on DS9, especially the Ferengi… But a few seasons later, when Garak breaks down from his wire, what does he reveal?
That he’s been in pain the entire time he’s been on DS9, since the Federation took over. That he’s been constantly cold, his head constantly aching, his ears ringing, his eyes hurting; that he can’t always hear when people speak to him over the noise or just because of their own volume. Not that it’s uncomfortable, not that it could be a little better… But that it hurts.
And he couldn’t say. And honestly, how could they change it, afterwards? How could they fix it? They can’t change the mean average for the entire station for one Cardassian — a spy, a traitor, someone from the other side.
But Julian knows, after that. Julian knows that wherever they go, in Federation space, under Federation rule, under Starfleet command, Garak is very uncomfortable. Garak is in pain. And even when he knows that pain and discomfort are normal for Cardassians, he knows that for Garak and other Cardassians, what they experience in Federation standard environs goes further — and yet they still come, at times.
Because they have to. Because where else can they go, if Cardassia won’t take them?
Sisko says it is not his goal to conquer with weapons or ideas, and I believe him, I believe that he believes it — but just by being there, the Federation conquers. Just by existing, with its wealth of resources, its safety, its ideas, its innovation, its knowledge, it conquers.
Because if you need what the Federation has, you must play by their rules. If you need their protection, you must learn to assimilate to their standards, because it’s better than dying or being left to starve. Even if it hurts. Even if it aches. Even if it sickens you — even if it goes against your culture, your religion, your standard of etiquette, your values, yourself, because if you can’t survive alone, and your people have been absorbed by the Federation or another power, the Federation is the last option you have.
And because the Federation doesn’t do it with weapons or ideas, it almost feels as though it was always your choice, even when you know it wasn’t. And maybe you grow to like it, like you grow to like root beer, although it’s sticky and sweet and overpowering, although you miss what you had before, because you’re a lifeform too, aren’t you? You’re just like the Federation’s people, you’re an explorer.
You want to reach out and touch others, and that the Federation is unfathomable in its size and power compared to you is irrelevant. After all, they don’t mean to be disruptive or violent. That they don’t comprehend how you exist isn’t their fault — how can they comprehend what they cannot experience? How can they conduct themselves on the basis of something they can barely imagine?
How can the Federation be expected to stay still, when they are made to expand and explore? They set rules, they have a Prime Directive — they only want to explore. Only want to look, only want to touch, only want to experience, only want to connect. How can a man be expected to walk on a path, and search the whole way for ants under his feet?
They don’t mean anything by it.
They can’t know the consequences until after they’ve gained the experience — and they can’t change everything for a tiny minority.
Can they?
(Did I mention how much I love DS9?)
Anyway, I love how Sisko breaks down in the Temple of the Prophets and cries over Jennifer and truly lets himself feel the emotion, stop denying his grief as he has to some extent thus far — I love how much Sisko is allowed to keep grieving Jennifer even years later, and how that feeling never goes away, but always stays, and will always ache, and how that’s okay, and to be expected. But I also do wonder how much the Prophets understand, knowing as we do where Sisko truly comes from by the end of the season, knowing that Sisko is the Emissary, and how much they truly don’t — how much can the Prophets deceive? How much can they understand what deception is, or withhold knowledge in the first place?
And Kira bluffing! Kira bluffing against the Cardassians and knowing that the Cardassians will back down because she’s a Bajoran, and therefore, they can’t know they’re not underestimating her! They know that the Bajorans are inherently unpredictable because they don’t back down against intimidation, and they aren’t tactical in the same way that the Federation are, nor the Cardassians themselves — and one Bajoran, one singular Bajoran who’s been a terrorist for years, who they know is specifically unpredictable?
She has them on the run like *snaps fingers* that.
AND…
The fact that toward the end of the episode, we see Bashir go from this charming, bumbling sweetheart to a man who goes suddenly stern, barks orders, and looks at Odo utterly unwaveringly, with his jaw set and his eyes hard, and Odo does as he’s told?
It’s such a small thing — Odo is on the back foot for the whole of Emissary, and I love how much he keeps ceding to other people because he’s trying to get the measure of all these new solids that go by different rules than he’s used to, but it’s a revealing moment for Bashir, too, and I think it’s important that it’s Odo who sees it, and not Kira or any of his Starfleet compatriots.
Because Bashir, for them, will keep on letting himself be seen as arrogant and silly and annoying and cartoonish, and he turns off that doctor command so quickly once the necessity for it is over that you almost believe he only puts it on to be a doctor, that he doesn’t know how to act like that outside of medicine.
Until it becomes clearer, of course, that he does know.
Part of it is simply that it’s the pilot and that characters just aren’t yet established until later in the series, but I believe in diegetic readings more than I do extradiegetic ones for character, and it’s so interesting to consider each of the characters and how much of their behaviour is changed by their new environment or challenge or command, their own secreted internal conflicts or offscreen concerns, and how much is genuine deception, whether conscious and intentional, or just repression.
Guh!
I just…
Ah.
Deep Space Nine.
I’m really excited to do more of these episode close readings as I go through the series — if you enjoyed this or you’re looking forward to specific character or episode commentary, please do let me know!
As well as individual episode close-readings, my plan is also to write some more targeted essays specifically about certain DS9 themes and characters, using my close readings as reference to go from — I’m always interested in Cardassian doublethink and the idea of the Ideal Cardassian from a Cardassian perspective, for example, especially in how Dukat, Garak, and Damar represent different Cardassian ideals, and also how the Federation displays its toleration of other cultures to a certain extent, but I’m interested in almost everything in DS9.
Thanks for reading!